Speed Reader

Review by Steven Robert Allen

A Carnivore's Inquiry

Sabina Murray

Atlantic Monthly Press

hardcover

$23

Katherine Shea knows all there is to know about cannibalism. She's intimately familiar with the most famous flesh-eating episodes in art, literature and history. Yes, she's a psycho. Murray's quirky protagonist drives this accomplished, new novel by the PEN/Faulkner Award winner.

Alone with the Horrors: The Great Short Fiction of Ramsey Campbell, 1961-1991

Ramsey Campbell

Tor Books

hardcover

$27.95

First published in 1993, Alone with the Horrors has been slightly rearranged and revamped in the hope that Campbell's smart, terrifying tales will appeal to a new generation of horror fans. The book collects nearly 40 stories from the first three decades in the career of the master.

Bad Move

Linwood Barclay

Bantam Books

hardcover

$23

Barclay's first mystery novel, about a jittery science fiction writer forced into a murderous confrontation with some seedy developers, is getting a warm reception from mystery fans due to its colorful anti-hero and light, comedic plot.

Flannery O'Connor and the Christ-haunted South

Ralph C. Wood

Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company

hardcover

$22

A devout Catholic in heavily Protestant Savannah, Ga., O'Connor laced subtle and profound religious threads into much of her fiction. By most accounts, Wood has added an important study to the voluminous literature that already exists about the life and ideas of one of the South's most potent fiction writers.